Feelings were mixed in city hall on Thursday, as the City of Cambridge Community Development Department proposed changes to Cambridge’s Multifamily Housing Ordinance (MFHO) that would increase the overall amount of setbacks, require more ground-level green space, and prohibit tall buildings with units that average more than 2,000 square feet.
During the joint meeting between the Housing and Neighborhood and Long-term Planning committees, some councillors and members of the public welcomed the proposed changes as “moderate” adjustments to last year’s suite of zoning changes that abolished single and two-family districts citywide and allowed for additional heights. But the changes also upset members of two warring factions in the city: defenders of the MFHO that want the city to give the ordinance a chance as is, and opponents concerned about a surge in multi-family housing projects that want to see it repealed.
City officials attempt a balancing act
The MFHO, passed in February of 2025, enacted two major changes into the city’s zoning code: it got rid of all single and two-family districts, folding them into a large multifamily district that now makes up the majority of the city’s footprint; and it allowed for buildings up to four stories high as-of-right in all areas of that district, or up to six stories for buildings that met certain affordability requirements.
While some balked at the increased heights (dubbed upzoning), other provisions have also seen increasing levels of frustration. The MFHO allowed for the sides and back of new residential buildings to extend as far as five feet to the property line (with a minimum ten-foot setback in the front). It also set the minimum allowed amount of ground level open space to 30 percent, decreasing it from as high as 50 percent in some former districts.
The CDD’s proposed changes would increase the total amount that buildings must be set back from the lot line but leaves it up for developers to decide where the largest setbacks need to be. While the department didn’t propose changing the total percent of required open space on each lot, it did suggest increasing the amount of ground-level “permeable” open space capable of absorbing water (typically grass).
Source: Cambridge Community Development Department presentation
“We’ve come up with some very modest changes that we think stay true to the heart of the multifamily zoning ordinance,” said Assistant City Manager for Community Development Melissa Peters, calling the MFHO “a transformative policy that we should be really proud of.”
Peters also said that the changes doesn’t affect the CDD’s projections for how many new units of housing will be built under the MFHO. Currently, the department estimates that there will be 10 times increase in housing growth compared to pre-2025 zoning by 2030.
But some of the largest property developers in the city said they were skeptical. One said that the changes would erase progress made on projects that have been designed already but awaiting permits.
“If you pass any one of these suggested changes, you will absolutely take all these [proposed] projects back to redevelopment,” said Patrick Barrett, a lawyer and developer of many commercial and residential properties in Cambridge, during the public comment period. (Barrett is one of multiple plaintiffs suing the city over its inclusionary zoning policy, which requires residential buildings of at least ten units or over 10,000 square feet to set aside 20 percent of floorspace for affordable units.)
Director of Zoning and Development Jeff Roberts said any new policy could have a delayed effective date, giving more time for developers to get outstanding permits approved under the 2025 design rules. But Barrett said the changes would also affect the number of units in future projects that haven’t undergone design yet. He later told Cambridge Day he thought the amount of units produced on each lot, depending on the size, could be cut by as much as half.
Some members of the community who supported the MFHO saw the proposed changes as an unnecessary early intervention.
“Delaying, pausing, or weakening the ordinance before it has had sufficient time to take effect would undermine its effectiveness, postpone the creation of urgently needed homes, and diminish its ability to address Cambridge’s housing shortage,” wrote members of the MIT Graduate Student Council in a statement sent to Cambridge Day. “Ensuring that [graduate students] can afford to live and build their lives in Cambridge is essential for promoting socioeconomic diversity and sustaining the city’s leadership in research, education, and innovation.
Some during public comment period said the proposed changes didn’t go far enough, elevating concerns about the rapid turnover in properties since the MFHO passed.
“This is a land grab,” said Suzanne Blier, president of Cambridge Citizens Coalition, a nonprofit that has been at the vanguard of organizing against the MFHO. “Who’s paying for this? Outside developers and investors — cash going everywhere.”
Some struck a more moderate tone.
“This is how I would hope my city government would work,” said Cambridge resident Thomas Pounds, speaking in favor of the proposed CDD amendments. “Make a bold first attempt at change, recognize and celebrate early successes, but just as importantly, have the courage to remain open-minded and honest in recognizing problems and less desirable outcomes as they emerge.”
Data about new buildings unveiled
CDD also presented new data on permits issued since the MFHO went into effect. According to Roberts, the ordinance has led to new projects across the city as intended, although larger projects in which inclusionary zoning apply have been slower to pop up.
Of the 41 multifamily housing projects approved since the MFHO, at least nine of them are required to have affordable units under the city’s inclusionary zoning rules. The other 32, if they are under 10,000 square feet in total floorspace, can list all their units at market rate.
Source: Cambridge Community Development Department presentation
“We’ve seen smaller multi-family housing developments breaking ground, mainly less than 10 units,” Roberts said, noting that the majority of them do not meet inclusionary zoning requirements. “We know that economic conditions are challenging right now and pretty uncertain for projects of a larger scale.”
“The perception in our neighborhoods is that a well-financed, professionally staffed developer’s lobby is pushing through a condo building rampage in the name of providing affordable housing,” said resident Carol Lynn Alpert.
But Councillor Marc McGovern, who voted for the MFHO last term, contested that increasing Cambridge’s supply of market-rate units was always the intention, and in many cases more affordable than the single-family homes they’re replacing.
“Another way to look at [the definition of] affordable is less expensive than the alternative,” McGovern said. “If you take a project where before multifamily housing, a developer would’ve built a single-family $3 million home and after multifamily housing is building six townhouses at … $2 million, right? Those are still six units that are cheaper than what the alternative was before.”
While the city doesn’t have an exact definition of what makes a unit “luxury,” CDD says it is taking a look at tying average unit size to the amount of height developers can build as-of-right in order to encourage more moderately-sized units. Their proposal: limiting buildings with more than 2,000 square feet of floor area per unit to three stories, rather than four.
“What it would ultimately do is in some cases could lead to developers either reconfiguring some projects so that there would be more units” or “it could also mean in some cases [developers] might go the other way and reduce the overall size,” Roberts said. According to city data, only one recently permitted project would be likely to get smaller.
Councillors still to weigh in
Thursday’s meeting, which lasted about two hours, will continue at a date to be scheduled. Of the councillors that were able to ask questions to city staff, there were a range of reactions.
“I support the amendments that have been proposed,” Councillor Cathie Zusy, the lone vote against the MFHO last term, said. She added that she hopes the new changes will clarify rules for developers in the long-term. “I think we need to set clear expectations for what we intend to do and what we will allow.”
Some were more skeptical of the city’s claims that the new requirements wouldn’t affect Cambridge reaching its goal to produce 12,500 units by 2030.
“I don’t understand how you can shrink the buildable lot of a building and not lose units, especially if you’re not going to increase the height,” McGovern said.
One thing councillors did agree on, though, was the need to calm down the rhetoric surrounding the issue.
With advocates on both sides claiming to be the true champions of affordability, tensions have risen between local groups. Some have turned their ire directly to councillors.
“I find it slightly humorous that I’ve been cast by ABC as a supervillain,” Zusy said, referencing A Better Cambridge, the leading Cambridge nonprofit in support of the MFHO. “I’ve never been cast as a supervillain before … I’m a very reasonable person.”
The frustration was felt on both sides.
“I agree with my colleague here about toning the rhetoric down, but I would say that on both sides,” McGovern said. “The city we love has changed from what it was 50 years ago, 100 years ago. But I do hope that everyone can just assume the best intentions even if we disagree on the specifics.”
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